The Big Big Sea - Martin Waddell, illustrated by Jennifer Eachus

This gentle, quiet book for very young children is utterly enchanting. A little girl is taken out by her mother in the middle of the night and they go paddling in the sea in the moonlight. It's about special bonding times between parents and children, and creating quiet moments in which to enjoy peace.



Far far away
right round the bay
were the town
and the lights
and the mountains.
We felt very small,
Mum and me.

We didn't go into town.
We just stayed for a while
by the sea.

And Mum said to me,
"Remember this time.
It's the way life should be."



The artwork by Jennifer Eachus beautifully captures the spirit of the book in subdued, moonlit tones. As an adult, it makes a wonderfully calming bedtime story.

The Stone Book Quartet - Alan Garner

If I could write well and I wanted to write a children's book, this is the book I would write. The Stone Book Quartet is a collection of four short stories in which Alan Garner brings his own Cheshire ancestors back to life with such vibrancy that some of his family were apparently pissed off with him for exposing their secrets. It's wonderful reading for anyone who is into genealogy (as I have been for 25 years) and who enjoys beautiful prose.....the stories are a work of art, with no superfluous language at all.

The stories are linked by time and real-life events over a period of about a century and if you get the Harper Perennial edition there are appendices which give more information about Garner's family and his thoughts on the book.

I know I'm not a great book reviewer anyway but I'm likely to break down and just gibber about this one because I think everyone should read it and I'm at a loss for words to describe why else, except that it is amazing!

Old girls' annuals: Bunty for Girls 1982, Tammy Annual 1982

I've always loved the old picture-story papers for girls that were produced years ago: Bunty, Judy, School Friend, Tammy etc. They first became popular in the post war years but sadly died off in the late 1990s, with the last bastion, Bunty, finally giving up the ghost in about 2000. I think this is a sad loss, even if today's little girls are supposed to prefer boybands and fashion to picture stories about ponies and ballet schools.

I always particularly liked the artwork used, and as you could recognise some distinctive personal styles I had my favourite artists too; it's sad that they were anonymous. It's fascinating to spot the same artist's work in a late 1960s School Friend right through to an early 1990s Bunty. For a girl who enjoyed drawing, they were quite inspirational.

I've acquired various annuals over the years, some of which were my mother's, some of which were given to me as Christmas presents, and others which I picked up at jumble sales either as a kid or later on. They're still great fun! Recently I visited my mum and collected a couple of them from her house: Tammy Annual 1982, and Bunty for Girls 1982.


Out of the two, I prefer Tammy (published by Fleetway/IPC Media). The stories seem more sophisticated somehow, and there was a longrunning strip called "Bella" about a gymnast which always featured incredibly well-studied pictures of a girl doing gymnastic poses. Bella gets in trouble with the law at times and has been known to live in a squat, which seems a bit gritty for a girls' paper but maybe that's why it's quite enjoyable to re-read as an adult!

Other picture stories in Tammy 1982 include "Molly Mills", about a 1920s maidservant (drawn by my fave artist - possibly called Douglas Perry); "Backhand Billie", an extra-long story about a rude girl pupil at a tennis academy; various spooky "strange stories"; and a Bessie Bunter comic strip, which is a hangover from June which was taken over by Tammy in the 1970s.

Bunty 1982 seems a bit silly in comparison, and a lot of the stories seem to be written around contrived names: "Belle of the Ball" is about a girl called Belle who has acquired an alien ball which bounces around observing human life; "Girl Friday" is about Fran Friday who sorts out problems in a hotel; "Try-It-Out Terry" tests products for a local newspaper and "Rambling Rose" is a scatterbrained schoolgirl. They're not bad stories, but there are better ones: "Catch the Cat" is about a schoolgirl resister in wartime France and "Maid Marian" takes command of the Merry Men as effectively as Robin Hood ever did.

I really have to mention "Wendy's Wonder Horse" because it's an absolute hoot:




How fabulous is that?? Coming up with these stories for a living must have been the best job EVER.

Pleasure Trove - Jennifer Curry

This is an old paperback of mine from the mid 1980s, given to me by a kind friend of my mum's when I was in hospital for 6 weeks when I was ten. The cover looks promising - nice and colourful with a pirate treasure chest with lots of goodies spilling out of it, and this encouraging blurb:

Stories....riddles....poems....limericks...things to make and do, all collected for your delight!

Sounds great doesn't it? Unfortunately this book is very hit-and-miss. Mostly miss, to be honest. As a ten year old it completely bemused me. Here are some of the random poems and things that it contains:

- An extract from On Gardens by Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
- Little Things by James Stephens, a poem about "little things that run and fail, and die in silence and despair..."
- An extract from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
- Parts of the Book of Revelation and Ecclesiastes from the Bible
- A Lyke Wake Dirge, a traditional English song that tells a Christian tale (although the ideas and the imagery may be pre-Christian) of the soul's travel, and the hazards it faces, on its way from earth to Heaven. Told in an old form of Yorkshire dialect from the 1600s.
- A rambing bit of prose by JB Priestley about "the delights of making stew"
- An extract from a medieval book of etiquette that was probably written for the Princes in the Tower

Even as a ten year old I remember thinking "this person really has no clue about what kids actually enjoy". All of the above are wonderful and I really adore A Lyke Wake Dirge nowadays, but as a kid lying in hospital I can remember listening to my uncle read it to me from this book, and thinking "wtf is he going on about". It's not that I was a thick kid either....just that my idea of pleasure was not grappling with a symbolic poem about the soul's travel written in seventeenth century Yorkshire dialect.

Such a shame, the editor obviously really wanted to make something kids would treasure but I actually prefer it now I'm 35.